Join the Conversation

Greyhound bus service departed from Fifth and Broadway

LCJ
9:37 p.m. EDT July 25, 2014

The Art Deco-style Greyhound bus station at Fifth Street and Broadway in downtown Louisville, shown in 1949, was later destroyed and replaced by an auto dealer’s lot. Charles Darneal/The Courier-Journal

Story Highlights

In 1948, some 300 buses went in and out of Louisville each day, not including “interurban runs.”

In 1970, a VIP christening party was held for the new $1.75 million bus station at 7th and Walnut.

Today, there’s Megabus.com service, which offers curbside pickup in Louisville without a terminal.

As Dallas-based Greyhound bus lines celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, Louisville can look back on at least 77 years of Greyhound service out of two distinctive bus terminals.

In 1937, a classy, new Art Deco-style Greyhound terminal opened on Broadway at Fifth Street downtown, sporting a tall, narrow sign that read: Greyhound Depot.

Today’s terminal is a sandblasted-concrete structure that opened amid great fanfare in 1970 at Seventh and Walnut streets, now Muhammad Ali Boulevard.

HISTORY

On April 28, 1937, opening day for the Fifth and Broadway terminal, three American flags flew out front along with decorative flags strung between poles along Broadway, as shown in a Courier-Journal photo.

In 1948, some 300 buses went in and out of Louisville each day, not including “interurban runs,” The C-J said.

In 1951, a “Southern Greyhound Lines” bus bearing a Nashville sign is shown departing from the station near a Sealtest Ice Cream truck, and on Derby Day, May 5, 1962, the station was crowded with “slumbering visitors catching 40 winks” before joining the crowds surging toward Churchill Downs, The C-J said.

DEMOLITION

The Greyhound depot was demolished in 1971, after the new $1.75 million Greyhound station opened, and plans called for turning the property into a parking lot.

“I’m sorry this building is going,” Bobby C. King, 56, who had shined shoes there for 20 years, said in a C-J story. “Here we get customers off the street.”

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary owned the property, once the site of its stately Norton Hall, decked with spires and towers, as shown in a 1923 photo in “Louisville Since the Twenties: Views Two,” by Samuel W. Thomas. By 1931, the site was occupied by an apparent precursor to the Greyhound station, the smaller Union Bus Station, after the seminary moved to Lexington Road in Crescent Hill.

Next door was Warren Memorial Presbyterian Church, at Fourth and Broadway. But the church was dismantled in 1958 and replaced by a parking lot, and today both sites are occupied by Brown Bros. Cadillac dealership.

‘NEW’ TERMINAL

A sketch of the modern-looking, new Greyhound terminal at Seventh and Walnut, designed by Arrasmith, Judd, Rapp & Associates Architects, was unveiled by “urban renewal commissioners” in March of 1968. The first bus, from Fort Knox, rolled in at 12:01 a.m. Dec. 10, 1970, an hour after the last two buses had pulled out of the old station.

About 150 politicians and other officials had attended a VIP christening party earlier in the evening, The C-J said. Lee Corso, the University of Louisville’s football coach, and others, including state treasurer Thelma Stovall, were made honorary Greyhound drivers.

The new facility was said to be more than twice as big as the old station and could handle 180 arrivals and departures daily. The urban renewal commission sold the site to Greyhound for about $400,000.

OPENING DAY FESTIVITIES

A full-page Greyhound ad picturing an actual greyhound dog ran in The C-J the day before the opening, inviting the public to an open house with free refreshments, gifts and balloons. “Go Greyhound .... and leave the driving to us,” it said.

The Louisville Times reported later on opening day that women bus passengers were given orchids to wear and that travelers trying to buy tickets struggled through crowds waiting for hams to be raffled — calling the terminal “a beehive of friendly chaos.”

MEGABUS.COM

Today, there’s also low-cost Megabus.com, which offers Louisville service to and from Chicago, Nashville and a few other cities without having any terminal here.

A crowd is often lined up at Fifth and Liberty streets at departure times, where passengers are simply picked up curbside by a large blue-and-gold bus.

Reporter Martha Elson can be reached at (502) 582-7061, melson@courier-journal.com and on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @MarthaElson_cj.